Many providers of consumer goods and services, and other advertisers, offer coupons, and/or other marketing devices such as discount certificates, price guarantees, and vouchers, to consumers in an effort to attract and/or encourage business.
Traditionally, coupons have been distributed in “hard-copy”, typically printed, form by various means, including, but not limited to: by mail; in newspapers; in magazines; in flyers and inserts; at store front and/or product displays; and/or as attachments to store receipts (i.e., printed on the back of a receipt or appended to a receipt). More recently, coupons have been offered/distributed using electronic coupon distribution and marketing means such as, but not limited to: networks of computing systems, including public networks such as the Internet; through and/or on web-sites; as functions associated with network search engines; by e-mail; as electronic coupon attachments to electronic receipts; and as electronic coupon attachments to transactional data, such as, but not limited to transactional data from and/or displayed by, banks, credit card companies, and other financial institutions.
Many coupons offer significant discounts to the consumer holding, and meeting the terms of, the coupon. Therefore, the coupons themselves, as well as the coupon distribution means, can represent a significant expense to the coupon provider. Typically, the coupon provider is willing to incur this expense, if economically feasible, to meet specific coupon provider goals, including, but not limited to: to help build up a customer base; to get consumers into a store; to retain customers who find a lower price for an item from a competitor; to lure customers away from a competitor; and/or to help clear excess inventory and/or to boost sales of a given product.
As noted, many coupon providers are willing accept the expense of a coupon program in order to meet specific coupon provider goals, if the expense is economically feasible. However, some potential coupons providers, particularly small and/or new businesses, don't find traditional printed format coupon programs cost effective, nor do they find sophisticated, and often even more expensive, electronic coupon distribution and marketing means cost effective. In addition, many coupon providers, and in particular, small businesses, do not have the time, money, and/or technical expertise to learn, much less master, currently available electronic coupon distribution and marketing means.
In addition, in order to most efficiently use their marketing and/or advertising resources, coupon providers, and small business coupon providers in particular, would often like to send coupons, or special coupons, to select consumers who are particularly desirable to the coupon provider. For instance, a coupon provider may be particularly interested in targeting select consumers with coupons, or special coupons, who shop with a competitor, or spend a threshold amount of money each month on products and/or services the coupon provider offers. A coupon provider may also be particularly interested in targeting select consumers of specific economic and social demographics, or who reside and/or shop in a specific geographic location. In other instances, a coupon provider may be particularly interested in targeting select consumers with coupons, or special coupons, who meet any other criteria of interest.
Despite the desire of coupon providers, and, in particular, small businesses, to target select consumers with coupons in a simple and “user-friendly” way, there currently is often no information, or not complete enough information, available to the coupon provider about a given consumer to enable the coupon provider to accurately identify the consumer as a desirable consumer. Consequently, currently, most targeting of select consumers is attempted using sophisticated electronic coupon distribution and marketing means that, as discussed above, often are not practical for smaller and/or newer businesses with limited time, money and resources.
Even in the few cases where limited information about a given consumer is available, the information is typically obtained from a single source, such as transactional data associated with a single credit card account, and/or as provided by the consumer themselves. Therefore the currently available information is typically incomplete, often unverified, and often only available to larger retailers, advertisers and other coupon providers, such as the retailer offering the credit card account that is the single source of information.
As a result of the situation discussed above, coupon providers and, in particular, small business coupon providers, are denied the ability to easily and quickly identify and target particularly desirable consumers for coupon distribution. In addition, the desirable consumers are also denied savings that would otherwise be provided to them through the coupons, if the information were available to identify them and a relatively simple coupon distribution system was available. Consequently, the current situation represents a disservice to both coupon providers and consumers.